Not having goals

Putting my effort on output not on the outcome.

A goal is something that goes away when you hit it. Jason Fried

Jason Fried talks about this in his famous post I’ve never had a goal He explains that he likes to approach things continuously. Not in hitting this goal. Then the next. And the next..

One of the reasons over the last 5 years (at least) that made me feel anxious and borderline depressed were the expectations of reaching a goal. I’ve been dreaming of turning Dedica into a super successful project. It’s not yet. The problem is that high expectations when unmet lead to a bunch of negative emotions. That had ramifications in a lot of aspects of my life. This article goes even further. Expectations are the root of all evil.

Learning about the stoic philosophy is helping in shaping my thinking. On The war of reality vs Expectations you can see how a stoic aproaches life, expactations and how to interpret reality. “Projecting fixed expectations in life blinds you to everything but the one-track, imaginary path you’ve predicted.”

My present is focused on the process and the output. What I do and how often I do it. The outcome is, for the most part, outside of my control. I need to be comfortable that some or maybe all of my projects will not become successful businesses. That’s a possibility. The focus is on the path and the learning.

Back to Jason Fried. He shared a great quote.

“The reason that most of us are unhappy most of the time is that we set our goals not for the person we’re going to be when we reach them, but we set our goals for the person we are when we set them.” Jim Coudal